


when the sun goes down, the moon will come

by muzaplacha



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Character Study, Child Loss, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Mentioned Scott McCall, Parenthood, Warning: Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muzaplacha/pseuds/muzaplacha
Summary: A study of Patricia Hale. Just roll with it.





	when the sun goes down, the moon will come

**Author's Note:**

> re-posted from an old tumblr  
> look- i dislike it when female characters are obsessed with children and pregnancies and whatever, but Peter makes so much more sense to me this way. i love him anyway, but this works better imho.

 

They met in Uni. Raymond Ko was second generation to Korean immigrants. He was hardworking, ambitious, gentle as a baby duck, and he did not belong in her world. For better or worse Patricia has always been a selfish creature, so she took when he offered, holding tight from that moment on.

 

He took to the supernatural like a fish to water and to her family like they were his own. He almost seemed, at times, like this was exactly what he was looking for, the eyes in the forest, the paws on the dirt, the rushing of poisonous blood. Sometimes she would catch him looking at her pack with such hunger that her wolf stirred posessively in her breast. She loved him all the more for it.

 

When she proposed he was eager to take her name (to take her bloodline, to devour her heart, to become new), but she convinced him to hyphenate.

 

_ ‘You are invited to the wedding celebration of _

_ Patricia Hale & _

_ Raymond Hale-Ko _

_ Hope to see you there. RSVP.’ _

 

-

 

Three months into the pregnancy she begins to fidget, at three and a half she’s hyper aware and tense all the goddamn time. At four she explodes-

“We really need to start looking at names,” – Raymond  started his weekly sermon, sitting next to Patricia on the wooden bench at the back of the family house- “start ruling out the ridiculous ones, at least.”

“I’m not even sure I want this!” – She’s frustrated, confused and more than a little bit scared. She’d been holding it in for four months and she shouldn’t, in fact she shouldn’t even have these doubts, Ray wants this goddamn baby, probably has since he knew what babies meant, how can she not want this?

“This?” – He seems in shock.

“This. This baby, Ray. It’s a bad idea.”

“Trish..” – Her name is a confounded little whisper on her husband’s lips, a shade lighter than the time when she told him she’s tired of waiting and proposed.

“Don’t call me that.” – She’s tired. Barely four months in and she feels as heavy as the house itself, and this confession, wrung out of her by the might of her exhaustion makes her heavier still.

“Pat. Isn’t it a little too late for doubts?” – She watches her human husband, a straw of a man, trying to be gentle with her; she could laugh,  “Give me a reason. Anything other than you thinking it’s a dangerous world.” She sighs, shuts her eyes and doesn’t say a word.

“Darling, you’re paranoid.” – They’ve had this discussion before, not specifically in regard to their own child, but in general, with connection to Talia’s policies, they had, they know all the words, it’s a script. She feels her blood rush nevertheless with the force of her conviction,  “I may well be but honestly Ray, I don’t understand how you’re not! You live in a world of monsters and you’ve yet to see even a meager percent of them, yet you’re eager to bring into it a defenseless child and just hope it does alright! You should be terrified!” – she’s on her feet now, facing him, and he looks at her with a kind of pity, “As you are?” – his voice is soft.

“At! Least!” – Patricia feels like slapping a door, like clamping down, like crying listen to me please I’ve seen things it’s not safe it’s not safe even for feeble human pups, and this lump inside of me is going to be in danger until the day that it dies, please and understand me.

 

The man gets up from the bench to face her; he is tall, and slight, and looks like he’d seen better days (He tells her – I haven’t. Not until you.) . His twig-like arms engulf her. She presses her nose into his neck and breathes deep, feeling his voice on her skin,  “You are a part of the largest and strongest Pack in the area. You’re under protection.”

They stand like this for a few more minutes, her back overheats under the sun and her thoughts turn sluggish, uncertain, she sighs out, “Yeah.” – and lets it go. She knows she’s paranoid. She’s got this. Talia’s got this. It’s going to be fine. He should pick the names, though, she doesn’t want to know just yet.

 

-

 

A woman sits in a chair by the window, holding a baby in her arms, it coos and she coos back. The infant is a tiny baby boy with more hair on his head that one would imagine a thing so small could have. The woman soothes him with gentle caresses, back and forth.

Patricia sees this, an image as old as time, and smiles – it’s her own reflection. Like a frame in a dream, wave-like and uncertain, she watches her other self move a hand and feels the tension in the muscles. Looking down, the hand hasn’t moved, but the fabric underneath her fingers is softer, like the one around her baby boy. She closes her eyes.

 

When she opens her eyes that night it feels final, like there’s no going back. The air is stale and her ears begin to ring with anxiety and foreboding. She won’t be able to forget. There must be a limit to one person’s lives and deaths. Pat opens her eyes, holds her breath and knows she never had a son. Her hands hold on to each other and tremble.

 

A woman sits in a wheelchair by the window, she is worse than empty.    
She is an urn of ashes.

She closes her eyes and carefully Does Not Think About It.

 

-

 

She says- ”Don’t ever stand between a woman and her revenge.” and “I can be persuasive.” and Stiles thinks that she is terrifying and magnificent. Standing in front of him she somehow projects taller than her physical form, engulfed in the lights of the stadium; the air around her pulsing with madness, oozing with a certainty that is so alien, that he can’t help but think she is god-like.

The woman holds Stiles deceptively softly and says something about equality and Scott and “You could be mine,” but it feels rushed, like an afterthought. Stiles mumbles through his answer and thanks God that she seems to be in a hurry, because he doesn’t know what Patricia Hale was like before the fire, but  _ this _ wild woman will get whatever she wants.

 

He thinks  _ have me _ and  _ I’m going to kill you _ and  _ it has to be Fire _ .

 

-

 

Stiles watches her burn and thinks  _ there’s something wrong with me _ . This can’t be happening, this can’t be real, all of this, all of this. He half expects her to emerge, unscorched, and declare herself “Patricia Hale, Mother of Dragons.” or “Mother of Werewolves”? He stifles a laugh. He’s half hysterical.

The air smells like burning hair and polyester, making him want to vomit, turn around, run away (This can’t be happening) – but he has no right. He did this (No!).

The boy forces his watering eyes to keep looking, something must happen soon. It must be happening even now, as he tries to measure the time he spent like this; rigid back, tense muscles, something of the essence of Kate Argent clinging to him like slime. Something must happen soon.

He thinks – if Patricia survives this, there will be nowhere to hide there will be no breath to take that will not resonate in her no step her eyes won’t follow he had forged something from him to her some iron chain, if she survives she will be on him she will not waver – 

Suddenly Derek’s claws are in her flesh and Stiles sighs, not quite knowing what he feels. Of course she couldn’t survive.

  
  


Of course she does.

 

-

 

When Patricia comes back it’s monumental.   
  


How fitting, she thinks, that she chose the Martin girl to carry her essence to term inside her mind, and then to give her the Rebirth she planned for but didn’t believe in at all. Emerging – a rotting, dusty thing – from the surrogate womb of the ruins that belonged to her original grave, wearily birthed by a young woman that was far too strong for her own good. How fitting, how bizarre; Pat is a new version of herself.

 

The new Her is a chimera, a grotesque (the parts of her that weren’t her husband, used to be almost wholly  _ Hale _ ); now she wakes up filled with Lydia’s monstrous dreams, bleeds her nephew’s blood. Her senses snap, like that of a bloodhound, to attention when the Stilinski boy is near and there is a spider’s web from an unnamed part of her body- by its tension she gauges the pulsating life of McCall (her paradox, her unruly Beta, her stubborn and unborn son). Above all, where there used to be a steady rhythm of a life that was both her own and yet entirely other, there is now an imprint of something warm and wormish that she can’t quite name, and it’s also Her.

 

When Patricia comes back it’s just shy of exciting.

 

Consuming feelings are things of the past; the anger, frustration, betrayal and pain. The world seems faded out, like someone tweaked the saturation on a digital photo, or left a print for some time in the sun (except this ragged bunch of kids, and the contrast hurts). She ignores Stiles when he calls her, taunting, zombie-wolf, but he’s right in more ways than one. These days she mostly only feels amusement and a secret sort of concern. She stays away.

She sits out of fights and conflicts when she can, lest she become the dragon she had slain; there is a voice inside of her that’s blonde and silver. It speaks boldly, with the conviction of preachers: I am above human morality. I am outside.

Her own voice echoes I am. I am.

  
  


When Patricia comes back it’s a mistake.

It’s becoming a habit.

 

-

 

In a noisy part of town Patricia buys an apartment, since no one seems to actually have the guts to kill her again (she keeps watching Stiles and Lydia, though. There is a bet pool). The windows are impractically big, the walls a dreary shade of green and the shower and toilet are in the same room. She thinks she might learn to like it, given she lives long enough. She paints the walls a warm brown, gets a deal on a heavy, old library and a few empty photograph frames. The rest she doesn’t touch for a month, for no particular reason other than there was no need.

Shelves pile up with books and she gets a sheepskin rug and a wicker chair, as a joke with herself, and a pillow. The chair goes in front of the window, the rug just under the library. She reads in either and is equally comfortable on both, but in her mind’s eye there’s a fireplace. She settles for scented sticks.

  
  


It’s nice; she takes out an egg from the fridge; at nights when her faux-pack runs amok in the forest like fluffy Duracell bunnies, she can feel on safe ground knowing this place exists. She turns on the stove, they really are ridiculous.

The egg breaks unevenly and the yolk escapes its thin membrane; a week ago she happened on a little shop that’s somewhere between souvenirs and antiques, taking home small bronze scales like in the movies and a key hook in the form of a horse’s head bearing its teeth. She seasons the egg.

In the absence of an actual table Pat pulls a bar stool to the high marbled counter of the kitchen, cutting the egg with her fork; she thinks she should tell Derek something about the Alpha Pack, anything really; the yellow moves quickly, prettily over the plate. To be perfectly honest she doesn’t really want to, in a passive way that might suggest to a stranger that she possibly feels the echo of her anger with the young man, but in reality it’s more like she doesn’t really care. The room smells like her lunch long after Patricia washed the plate and decided that- no, she won’t offer up any knowledge she might have, but neither will she hide it when it’s asked of her.

The woman lies down on the soft carpet in the shadow of the shelves, closes her eyes and tries to remember Ray’s little smile when he thought she was secretly right. The scales she bought are on a shelf that’s below the one at her eye level when she stands; they are polished and the cups are uneven with the weight of small stones which she had taken to collecting from wherever. The cup facing the windows is for the Banshee and it’s currently the one that hangs lowest; the other, facing the kitchen, is for the Spark. The boy’s cup has stayed unchanged for a while now - she needs to do something about it, maybe rile him up. Ray finally smiles on the backs of her lids. It doesn’t feel like anything at all.

 

-

 

Talia had always seen herself as the white knight. When they’d been girl, so fucking long ago, they were incredibly close. Talia was the only other child Pat could trust; secrets whispered under curtains of hair, messages hidden in dolls’ clothes. When they played Talia would cast Patricia as the princess, heiress, daughter, international terrorist, hunter, druid, rogue. She would always save the day.

So yes, maybe Pat’d come to resent that; learnt to breathe evenly and slowly when Talia got that look on her face that meant a hard decision has to be made, for the good of the pack, no less- and she was the one to make it. Still, McCall could have learned a thing or two.

 

-

 

The wild girl has sand colored hair and a small face that makes something inside Patricia heavy and cold as she hears- “I’m here to find my father. He is a Hale.”

Pat lets out a little, breathless “Oh” without even meaning to. Someone echoes her with a “Shit”, but she can’t bring herself to care who it was. She feels detached (lucid, aware, but like she’s not there at all) as hands touch her shoulders and guide her body to sit on something solid. She hears:

 

“Stiles?”

“I’m pretty sure it was Raymond Hale - her husband.”

“Was?”

“Sorry to tell you but he’s dead. Pretty much all of them are dead.”

“How do you even know about this?” , “Where are you going?”

“You know I looked over the files when this shitstorm started. Why else would she have such a reaction? It just makes sense.”, “There’s nothing here.”

“Shit.”, “Look, you can’t just go, what are you even-”

“I’ll turn back.”, “This is so unhealthy.” and “Would you like to see a picture?”

 

Silence seeps into the stillness of her body alerting her to the people around; everyone was quiet and watching. Had she said that last line?She must have. She clears her throat, “I have some.. left. And food. I think there’s food.”

The child looks at her, head tilted in a canine manner, suspicion in her slightly squinted eyes, “Meat?”

“Yeah,” Pat sighs, “I have meat.”

Derek starts as if to move in Patricia’s direction, “But she needs-”

Patricia growls, “Food. A bath. Sleep. Everything else can wait.” - She feels suddenly protective of this pup with her acrid smelling guilt, small frame and the shape of Ray’s shoulders. Killed her family, has she. She and Derek should start a club. 

She takes Malia (And oh, are you kidding me? Really?) home.

 

Of course it turns out her sister stole the girl away from her tooth and claw, quite literally. Dug into Patricia’s neck and stole the hurt, the betrayal, the tiny hands, the elated-afraid-guilty-joyful look on her husband’s face. Did Talia think she would kill the girl, this sign of infidelity? Or Ray? Always the peacekeeper, always the perfect Alpha making the difficult decisions. Pat’s insides burn with hate that she finally allows herself to feel.

 

She destroys her meticulously assembled flat, but there are no tears for her as she gets herself up from the wreckage and joins the girl on the stairs outside the door. She’s wearing Patricia’s jacket.

They sit quietly, steady breaths, loose limbs. The coyote reaches her hand towards Patricia to give her back the photos of Raymond she was looking through. Probably the only reason they were saved from the destruction, and says simply - “He looks like an asshole.”

When night comes Pat rescues the mattress from under splinters, lays it on a relatively clean surface and burrows under layers of blankets. The precious, lovely pup curls into a ball, nose tucked into Pat’s stomach, and she feels her heart go warm from the shallow breaths and the earlier attempt at comfort.

 

Just not warm enough.

 

-

(But if Patricia’s heart is empty and reeking of fire and if coyote cubs are often born and kept in hollow trees then maybe there’s something there for the two of them.)

-

 

On an overcast monday she drives her teenage daughter to school for the first time. What an absurd sentence. Nothing’s gone the way it was supposed to. Malia has been excited and wary and proud, going through emotions the way young children do. Sometimes when the girl is quiet it’s easy to forget how stunted she is in terms of mental development. She is so vulnerable and fearsome and young; doesn’t seem to mind that her new parent is a murdering piece of scum. Patricia practices looking at her and not seeing Ray.

 

Stiles waits for them in the parking lot with his face composed into something mild and calm, like she can’t smell on him everything he’s feeling. She is attuned to every breath he takes down to the hairs on her arms, the roots of her teeth. Seeing him brings flashbacks to fire- she’s almost grateful for the way it makes the world a little less dim. She likes him though she really shouldn’t, the way he shouldn’t like Malia. What a mess.

When Derek was a teenager in this very high school he fell in love, and someone took advantage of that.

The four of them stand silently at the parking lot - Patricia, Stiles, Malia and Kate- until more students begin to arrive. Pat hopes Stiles feels Kate, sees her, thinks about her every time he smiles at her cub, like she does when she smirks at him. She hopes they remember.

Patricia get in the car and Malia turns to gift her with an excited smile. She’d kill anyone who hurts her. Or, well, she’d probably kill just about anyone for no particular reason at all, but having one makes so much difference. Socially.

-

 

When Patricia sees Kate Argent again the blood rushes into her head so quick she blacks out for a minute. That night, at her and her daughter’s home she lets go of the hold she had on herself for the entire goddamn day and the force of her anger has her trembling until she smashes her fist into a block of concrete wall. The bones of her fingers stick out in jagged sticks from the pulp of meat and muscle, and she sobs so hard she can’t breathe; writhes through the pain until she blacks out. She resurfaces to Malia making frightened noises in the corner of the room and agony almost brighter than rage.

When she decides to pretend to work with her she knows it will probably kill her, whether it be Argent herself or Pat’s miserable nephew. But she need to know how the hunter came back. She needs to be able to kill her again and for good. Keep your enemies closer. She wants to believe that there’s strength in that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is old. i fixed it up and released it. this is all that's gonna be.  
> reminder - i neither remember nor care about canon. season 3 who?


End file.
